Taibbi writes: "In the wake of Ferguson and Baltimore, there's been a lot of
attention focused on police violence, as a symbol of the unfairness baked
into our justice system. But when it comes to civil rights issues and the
Wealth Gap, bail is where the rubber meets the road."
Jeff Rivera spent six days in the Tombs, as the Manhattan Detention Complex
is known, when he couldn't afford to make bail. (photo: Yanina Manolova/AP)
Jailed for Being Broke
By Matt Taibbi, Rolling Stone
23 June 15
a little over a week ago, a 23-year-old construction worker in the Bronx
named Jeff Rivera got in an argument with his wife, from whom he is
separated. During the argument, he struck her door, pushing in the screen.
Rivera was arrested and brought to court, where he was charged with criminal
mischief, a misdemeanor, for pushing in the screen door. Though the sentence
for being convicted of a misdemeanor offense like criminal mischief is hard
to predict, the more immediate question for Rivera was whether or not he'd
be jailed before trial.
Rivera had no reason to expect that he'd have to post bail to stay out of
jail. Not only was the offense relatively minor, but he has no criminal
history, is employed, and has a child and every reason in the world to show
up for his trial. Judges are only supposed to set bail for two main reasons:
if the defendant is a flight risk, or if he or she is a danger to the
community.
"Bail is for guaranteeing that a person appears at trial. It's not a
punishment," says Rivera's lawyer, Alexandra Bonacarti of New York County
Defender Services. "There's absolutely no reason to set bail on someone like
Jeff who has a job, a child, no criminal history, no history of missing a
court date, and is not charged with a violent crime."
But Rivera was unlucky. He went to court and stood before a judge who
decided to set bail of $500 in his case.
Rivera didn't have the money, which means he'd essentially committed two
crimes, the second more serious than the first: he'd pushed in a screen
door, and he didn't have $500.
He was shocked to find that he was about to be carted off to the Manhattan
Detention Complex, an infamous place also known as the Tombs. "I was
shocked. There are real criminals in there, murderers and rapists," he says.
"You've got to be real careful about what you say in there. One word can set
somebody off."
Rivera spent the weekend before last in the Tombs, wondering how long he'd
be in. As the hours ticked by, he started to worry about all kinds of
things.
"Things happen in there," he says. "I was worried, if I get in a fight, I
might be charged with another crime. And I'd be in there longer."
He survived the weekend. Then, last Monday night, some inmates got into an
argument, one that spilled over into the next morning, when a real fight
started. Rivera managed to stay out of the melee, but still got hurt later
that day when his fingers got caught in a cell door.
Finally, last Wednesday, Rivera was released on his own recognizance after
the city failed to get a supporting deposition from the wife. He never made
bail. The case is still open, and he has a court date in July, though the DA
has indicated to Bonacarti that he's considering a dismissal. In total,
Rivera spent over six days in the Tombs.
"I shouldn't have been in there for six days," he says today. "And really
not for five days, or four, or three. It's crazy."
Rivera was lucky. His boss was understanding about what happened, so he'll
be back at work. And he appears not to have broken his hand.
But it could have been worse, and often is. Bonacarti says the problem of
people being jailed for the crime of not having enough money is something
public defenders like her see regularly. "It happens all the time," she
says. "People have no idea."
In fact, her office caught another such case on the same day the Rivera
incident was playing out.
In that instance, two parents were arrested after allegedly leaving children
unattended in a shelter in Harlem. Police say the adults left the children
to go get food at a store.
It's a not insignificant accusation, but the charge - endangerment of the
welfare of a child - is still only a misdemeanor. And the female defendant,
who is nine months pregnant, had (and has) no criminal record. Neither did
the male defendant.
The District Attorney's office didn't even ask for bail, and defense lawyers
felt sure that the judge was going to release both parents pending trial.
Wrong. The judge asked for $500, for a woman weeks away from childbirth and
broke enough to be living in a shelter.
"I mean, if she had $500, she wouldn't be living in a shelter," says
Bonacarti.
Then Bonacarti added a refrain many defense lawyers repeat, when talking
about bail for poor clients: "If you're going to set bail at $500, you might
as well make it a million. There's no difference for this kind of person."
The woman ended up being freed, after a higher court overturned the bail
decision. It was just a lucky break that she wasn't forced to give birth in
jail over a misdemeanor.
The impact of episodes like this are hard to overstate. Many defendants lose
jobs while they're waiting for courts to decide their guilt or innocence.
Others lose semesters of school study. In other cases, people can lose
custody of children.
Still others end up pleading guilty to the charges, irrespective of guilt or
innocence, because a) the sentences they face may be less severe than the
time they could spend in jail awaiting trial, or b) pleading guilty ends up
being the fastest way for defendants to get back to their kids, their jobs,
school, etc.
Of course, pleading guilty carries its own consequences, among other things
making pre-trial detention even more likely the next time around. The cycle
is simultaneously vicious and absurd.
It's not easy to get the public to care about bail. It's particularly hard
for people with little exposure to the criminal justice system to sympathize
with those who get arrested, particularly for crimes of violence.
What people forget is that those who've merely been charged with crimes
aren't officially guilty yet. And not-yet-guilty people aren't supposed to
go to the hole, except under very narrowly defined sets of circumstances -
for flight risks or for threats to the community. It's certainly not
supposed to be a punishment for not having $500.
But it works out differently in practice. In the era of "Broken Windows" and
community policing, a crime-prevention strategy designed to generate vast
numbers of minor arrests, more and more people are ending up in jail for
what amounts to the crime of not having money.
The bail issue is only just starting to get some profile in the press, which
of course has focused quite a lot on criminal justice and inequality issues
in the last year.
For instance, The New York Times ran a depressing piece recently about an
African-American man from Baltimore named Dominick Torrence. Torrence had
bail set at $250,000 for disorderly conduct and rioting, after being
arrested during the protests over the Freddie Gray killing in April.
That amount, $250,000, was "the same amount as two of the officers facing
charges over Mr. Gray's death," as The Times put it. The paper added, in a
parenthetical observation that one encounters a lot in stories of
misdemeanor policing, that Torrence "spent a month in jail on charges that
would later be dropped."
Torrence's lawyer, Todd Oppenheim, wrote a piece in the Baltimore City Paper
that highlighted the unintended consequences of excessive bail. While
Torrence was jailed, his girlfriend, Markeisha Brown, had to drop out of
school because Torrence wasn't around to help take care of the kids. Paying
court costs also drained their finances to the point where the lights were
shut off at home.
Now, Torrence had a record, including several charges of drug dealing, but
no history of violence. And that was clearly a factor in the high bail that
was set. But as Bonacarti's case of the pregnant defendant shows, even a
clean record isn't enough to prevent judges from setting substantial bail.
In most states, multiple factors are considered before a bail recommendation
is reached. These formulas for setting bail often favor people who have
money over those who don't.
In New York, for instance, anyone coming through the system has to be
interviewed by the not-for-profit Criminal Justice Agency. The CJA asks a
series of questions of each defendant and assigns a numerical score to each
answer.
If you've missed a court appearance in previous years, you get dinged. If
you don't have a working telephone, a fixed New York address, or family
showing up in court to see you, it also affects your score.
Bonacarti had a client recently who the DA argued should be jailed because
he lived in a shelter. Prosecutors claimed living in a shelter was evidence
the defendant didn't have ties to the community.
"Living in a shelter doesn't mean you don't have ties to the community,"
Bonacarti says. "It just shows a lack of housing."
Politicians all over the country have spent plenty of time talking about the
size of prison and jail populations. Even conservative politicians like Rand
Paul have complained about the financial and social costs of throwing
non-violent offenders in jail. And here in New York, Mayor Bill de Blasio
has targeted the issue of overcrowded jails, recently releasing a plan to
reduce court delays that cause people to spend inordinate periods of time
behind bars awaiting trial.
But few politicians have specifically gone after the inequities of the bail
system, which remains too obscure an issue for most voters.
In a few cities, there have been attempts to create bail funds, which would
allow people who are in jail for purely financial reasons to stay out. Here
in New York, there's already a private charity in the Bronx that helps
people get out of short jail sentences.
Meanwhile, New York City Council Speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito has proposed
the creation of a $1.4 million public bail fund, which could help some of
the 11,000 or so people in this city who annually fail to make bail in
amounts ranging from $20 to $2,000.
Naturally, this proposal was met with hostility from the city tabloids, who
rarely see a stiff punishment they don't like. From the Daily News:
"Council Speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito wants to hand Get Out of Jail Free
cards to criminal defendants - paid for not with Monopoly money, but with
yours.
The Council would post [bail] payments in order to enable defendants to live
in freedom while awaiting trial. Some chutzpah."
There are plenty of truly dangerous people who get arrested, people most of
us wouldn't be sorry to see jailed. But the idea that it's "chutzpah" to
suggest that nobody should be in jail just for being poor is about as mean
as modern America gets. And we can be pretty mean.
In the wake of Ferguson and Baltimore, there's been a lot of attention
focused on police violence, as a symbol of the unfairness baked into our
justice system. But when it comes to civil rights issues and the Wealth Gap,
bail is where the rubber meets the road. You can walk into any arraignment
court, anytime, and see how bad it is. Is it really that hard to fix?
Error! Hyperlink reference not valid. Error! Hyperlink reference not valid.
Jeff Rivera spent six days in the Tombs, as the Manhattan Detention Complex
is known, when he couldn't afford to make bail. (photo: Yanina Manolova/AP)
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/jailed-for-being-broke-20150623htt
p://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/jailed-for-being-broke-20150623
Jailed for Being Broke
By Matt Taibbi, Rolling Stone
23 June 15
little over a week ago, a 23-year-old construction worker in the Bronx
named Jeff Rivera got in an argument with his wife, from whom he is
separated. During the argument, he struck her door, pushing in the screen.
Rivera was arrested and brought to court, where he was charged with criminal
mischief, a misdemeanor, for pushing in the screen door. Though the sentence
for being convicted of a misdemeanor offense like criminal mischief is hard
to predict, the more immediate question for Rivera was whether or not he'd
be jailed before trial.
Rivera had no reason to expect that he'd have to post bail to stay out of
jail. Not only was the offense relatively minor, but he has no criminal
history, is employed, and has a child and every reason in the world to show
up for his trial. Judges are only supposed to set bail for two main reasons:
if the defendant is a flight risk, or if he or she is a danger to the
community.
"Bail is for guaranteeing that a person appears at trial. It's not a
punishment," says Rivera's lawyer, Alexandra Bonacarti of New York County
Defender Services. "There's absolutely no reason to set bail on someone like
Jeff who has a job, a child, no criminal history, no history of missing a
court date, and is not charged with a violent crime."
But Rivera was unlucky. He went to court and stood before a judge who
decided to set bail of $500 in his case.
Rivera didn't have the money, which means he'd essentially committed two
crimes, the second more serious than the first: he'd pushed in a screen
door, and he didn't have $500.
He was shocked to find that he was about to be carted off to the Manhattan
Detention Complex, an infamous place also known as the Tombs. "I was
shocked. There are real criminals in there, murderers and rapists," he says.
"You've got to be real careful about what you say in there. One word can set
somebody off."
Rivera spent the weekend before last in the Tombs, wondering how long he'd
be in. As the hours ticked by, he started to worry about all kinds of
things.
"Things happen in there," he says. "I was worried, if I get in a fight, I
might be charged with another crime. And I'd be in there longer."
He survived the weekend. Then, last Monday night, some inmates got into an
argument, one that spilled over into the next morning, when a real fight
started. Rivera managed to stay out of the melee, but still got hurt later
that day when his fingers got caught in a cell door.
Finally, last Wednesday, Rivera was released on his own recognizance after
the city failed to get a supporting deposition from the wife. He never made
bail. The case is still open, and he has a court date in July, though the DA
has indicated to Bonacarti that he's considering a dismissal. In total,
Rivera spent over six days in the Tombs.
"I shouldn't have been in there for six days," he says today. "And really
not for five days, or four, or three. It's crazy."
Rivera was lucky. His boss was understanding about what happened, so he'll
be back at work. And he appears not to have broken his hand.
But it could have been worse, and often is. Bonacarti says the problem of
people being jailed for the crime of not having enough money is something
public defenders like her see regularly. "It happens all the time," she
says. "People have no idea."
In fact, her office caught another such case on the same day the Rivera
incident was playing out.
In that instance, two parents were arrested after allegedly leaving children
unattended in a shelter in Harlem. Police say the adults left the children
to go get food at a store.
It's a not insignificant accusation, but the charge - endangerment of the
welfare of a child - is still only a misdemeanor. And the female defendant,
who is nine months pregnant, had (and has) no criminal record. Neither did
the male defendant.
The District Attorney's office didn't even ask for bail, and defense lawyers
felt sure that the judge was going to release both parents pending trial.
Wrong. The judge asked for $500, for a woman weeks away from childbirth and
broke enough to be living in a shelter.
"I mean, if she had $500, she wouldn't be living in a shelter," says
Bonacarti.
Then Bonacarti added a refrain many defense lawyers repeat, when talking
about bail for poor clients: "If you're going to set bail at $500, you might
as well make it a million. There's no difference for this kind of person."
The woman ended up being freed, after a higher court overturned the bail
decision. It was just a lucky break that she wasn't forced to give birth in
jail over a misdemeanor.
The impact of episodes like this are hard to overstate. Many defendants lose
jobs while they're waiting for courts to decide their guilt or innocence.
Others lose semesters of school study. In other cases, people can lose
custody of children.
Still others end up pleading guilty to the charges, irrespective of guilt or
innocence, because a) the sentences they face may be less severe than the
time they could spend in jail awaiting trial, or b) pleading guilty ends up
being the fastest way for defendants to get back to their kids, their jobs,
school, etc.
Of course, pleading guilty carries its own consequences, among other things
making pre-trial detention even more likely the next time around. The cycle
is simultaneously vicious and absurd.
It's not easy to get the public to care about bail. It's particularly hard
for people with little exposure to the criminal justice system to sympathize
with those who get arrested, particularly for crimes of violence.
What people forget is that those who've merely been charged with crimes
aren't officially guilty yet. And not-yet-guilty people aren't supposed to
go to the hole, except under very narrowly defined sets of circumstances -
for flight risks or for threats to the community. It's certainly not
supposed to be a punishment for not having $500.
But it works out differently in practice. In the era of "Broken Windows" and
community policing, a crime-prevention strategy designed to generate vast
numbers of minor arrests, more and more people are ending up in jail for
what amounts to the crime of not having money.
The bail issue is only just starting to get some profile in the press, which
of course has focused quite a lot on criminal justice and inequality issues
in the last year.
For instance, The New York Times ran a depressing piece recently about an
African-American man from Baltimore named Dominick Torrence. Torrence had
bail set at $250,000 for disorderly conduct and rioting, after being
arrested during the protests over the Freddie Gray killing in April.
That amount, $250,000, was "the same amount as two of the officers facing
charges over Mr. Gray's death," as The Times put it. The paper added, in a
parenthetical observation that one encounters a lot in stories of
misdemeanor policing, that Torrence "spent a month in jail on charges that
would later be dropped."
Torrence's lawyer, Todd Oppenheim, wrote a piece in the Baltimore City Paper
that highlighted the unintended consequences of excessive bail. While
Torrence was jailed, his girlfriend, Markeisha Brown, had to drop out of
school because Torrence wasn't around to help take care of the kids. Paying
court costs also drained their finances to the point where the lights were
shut off at home.
Now, Torrence had a record, including several charges of drug dealing, but
no history of violence. And that was clearly a factor in the high bail that
was set. But as Bonacarti's case of the pregnant defendant shows, even a
clean record isn't enough to prevent judges from setting substantial bail.
In most states, multiple factors are considered before a bail recommendation
is reached. These formulas for setting bail often favor people who have
money over those who don't.
In New York, for instance, anyone coming through the system has to be
interviewed by the not-for-profit Criminal Justice Agency. The CJA asks a
series of questions of each defendant and assigns a numerical score to each
answer.
If you've missed a court appearance in previous years, you get dinged. If
you don't have a working telephone, a fixed New York address, or family
showing up in court to see you, it also affects your score.
Bonacarti had a client recently who the DA argued should be jailed because
he lived in a shelter. Prosecutors claimed living in a shelter was evidence
the defendant didn't have ties to the community.
"Living in a shelter doesn't mean you don't have ties to the community,"
Bonacarti says. "It just shows a lack of housing."
Politicians all over the country have spent plenty of time talking about the
size of prison and jail populations. Even conservative politicians like Rand
Paul have complained about the financial and social costs of throwing
non-violent offenders in jail. And here in New York, Mayor Bill de Blasio
has targeted the issue of overcrowded jails, recently releasing a plan to
reduce court delays that cause people to spend inordinate periods of time
behind bars awaiting trial.
But few politicians have specifically gone after the inequities of the bail
system, which remains too obscure an issue for most voters.
In a few cities, there have been attempts to create bail funds, which would
allow people who are in jail for purely financial reasons to stay out. Here
in New York, there's already a private charity in the Bronx that helps
people get out of short jail sentences.
Meanwhile, New York City Council Speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito has proposed
the creation of a $1.4 million public bail fund, which could help some of
the 11,000 or so people in this city who annually fail to make bail in
amounts ranging from $20 to $2,000.
Naturally, this proposal was met with hostility from the city tabloids, who
rarely see a stiff punishment they don't like. From the Daily News:
"Council Speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito wants to hand Get Out of Jail Free
cards to criminal defendants - paid for not with Monopoly money, but with
yours.
The Council would post [bail] payments in order to enable defendants to live
in freedom while awaiting trial. Some chutzpah."
There are plenty of truly dangerous people who get arrested, people most of
us wouldn't be sorry to see jailed. But the idea that it's "chutzpah" to
suggest that nobody should be in jail just for being poor is about as mean
as modern America gets. And we can be pretty mean.
In the wake of Ferguson and Baltimore, there's been a lot of attention
focused on police violence, as a symbol of the unfairness baked into our
justice system. But when it comes to civil rights issues and the Wealth Gap,
bail is where the rubber meets the road. You can walk into any arraignment
court, anytime, and see how bad it is. Is it really that hard to fix?
http://e-max.it/posizionamento-siti-web/socialize
http://e-max.it/posizionamento-siti-web/socialize